Background: Furnham and Hughes (2014) previously reported that a sample of adults was only able to recognize 37% of 249 myths based on those presented in Lilienfeld et al.'s (2009) Great Myths of Popular Psychology. Objective: We sought to replicate these findings and to investigate predictors (e.g., education, cognitive ability, and personality)…

Engaging in the construction and interpretation of graphs is a complex process involving concerted activation of context-specific cognitive resources. As students engage in this process, they apply fine-grained, intuitive ideas to graphical patterns: graphical forms. Using data involving pairs of students constructing and interpreting graphs, we…

Previous research has shown that students employ intuitive thinking when understanding scientific concepts. Three types of intuitive thinking--essentialist, teleological, and anthropic thinking--are used in biology learning and can lead to misconceptions. However, it is unknown how commonly these types of intuitive thinking, or cognitive…

Dating violence and sexual assault are topics of concern on college campuses and although they are often viewed as separate issues, they are overlapping constructs within the construct of interpersonal violence. Research suggests that people perpetrate dating violence and sexual assault for the same reasons. However, campus programming frequently…

This study investigates alternative conceptions of chemistry concepts among Faculty of Science students at Palestine Technical University-Kadoorie. Students are found to have incorrect views about fundamental chemistry concepts. The study aims to identify these misconceptions, understand their origins, and their impact on students' comprehension.…

Do people think about genetic inheritance as a deterministic or probabilistic process? Do adults display systematic biases when reasoning about genetic inheritance? Knowing how adults think about genetic inheritance is valuable, both for understanding the developmental endpoint of these concepts and for identifying biases that persist even after…

Superstitious behaviors persist across time, culture, and age. Although often considered irrational and even potentially harmful, superstitions have recently been shown to have positive effects on stress levels, confidence, and ultimately, performance. However, it remains unclear how people conceive of superstitious behaviors, specifically,…

A sample of 116 university students enrolled in developmental psychology courses participated in a study examining whether playing interactive video games with older adults would reduce students' misconceptions and negative stereotypes about older adults and increase their willingness to interact with older adults in the future. A service-learning…

Electricity and magnetism are fundamentally interconnected, as represented by the symmetry in Maxwell's equations. Much of the research on Gauss's and Ampere's laws has focused on their application in calculating electric or magnetic fields. However, there remains a significant gap in the literature in exploring these laws in a broader…

Background: A great amount of information is presented to psychology students through various mediums, often leading to misinformation and believing inaccurate psychological myths. Objective: We conducted two studies to examine psychomythology of psychopathology and whether mythbusting may be an effective pedagogical tool. Method: In Study 1, a…

This study aimed to assess the effect of web-based reproductive health education provided to university students in Turkey on their belief in sexual myths and risky behaviours. A randomised controlled trial was conducted in a state university between March-October 2021 with 96 students. The web-based health education was developed using the ADDIE…

Despite representations' central role in conveying chemical phenomena, mastering them is not trivial, given the wide variety of different conventions to interpret and use them. Furthermore, instructional approaches and materials may overlook explicit discussion on how students should reason with representations. To gather evidence that could guide…

Organic chemistry is accepted as a crucial part of science higher education funneling students into many career opportunities such as pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and medical industries. Students attempting organic chemistry courses in higher education are among a plethora of majors including biology, chemistry, health science, and engineering.…

Diversity-centered courses may prompt student biases and misconceptions in unique ways. Studies have illustrated that developing an understanding of why value-laden content is difficult for students to learn is paramount to effective teaching. Research has indicated that self-reflection has a positive effect on academic growth. This study explores…

We use the Survey of Thermodynamic Processes and First and Second Laws-Long (STPFaSL-Long), a research-based survey instrument with 78 items at the level of introductory physics, to investigate introductory and advanced students' difficulties with entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. We present an analysis of data from 12 different…